Occam's Razor's Edge is an attempt to make sense of a world gone mad. I do not strive to leave a perfect world only one better than I found.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Recently there has been a lot of discussion about the United States use of torture. Now if you’ve been paying attention torture violates the Geneva Convention. There is now some debate of whether or not we should compromise the Geneva Convention.

OK kids this is a really easy so pay attention. This is going to be short and sweet or at least as short as I get.

Torture has absolutely no moral basis in any faith or in any humanistic school of thought. There is no moral basis for torture at all. The only people who try and justify its use are fear mongers and sadists. I did hear one fool call into the Randi Rhodes radio show and try use the “eye for eye” argument. What a goof. Eye for eye is a call for just punishment not a free pass to behave like the lowest of the low. Since there is absolutely no moral basis for torture our use of it gives absolutely no reason to ever claim we have any sort of moral high ground. We are stooping to the level of those we claim to be evil. How can you overcome anyone or anything by descending to its level? How can the United States claim any moral high ground by water boarding and dripping menstrual blood on prisoners?

Torture is also is not a reliable method of getting information. If the police arrest you and they torture a confession out of you it’s inadmissible, because the information is unreliable. People will say anything to get the torture to stop. There are other more effective means of getting information. Interrogators are smart. They know how to get information by using psychology in ways that don’t involve humiliation and sleep depravation. Torture because it is unreliable is worthless.

Now I’ve heard the argument that goes a little something like this. What if we knew a bomb was hidden somewhere and we had in custody someone who know where that bomb was, wouldn’t torture be acceptable if it saved lives? OK, I’m helpful and all so here’s what you do. You call Agent Jack Bauer from the television series 24 because that’s where you got this crappy idea!

So we have learned that torture is immoral and unreliable. So why does anyone want to use it ?